1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to devices for producing and dispensing foams made by mixing foamable liquids and pressurized gases. More particularly, this invention is directed to a device for dispensing a foam such as a soap fluid which can be manually or automatically actuated without requiring the squeezing or deformation of a foam containing vessel and which can be disposable in whole or part.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hand operated dispensing bottles such as are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,323,689 are used for dispensing liquid soaps cleaning fluids, and the like. Handheld squeeze bottles of relatively small capacity for generating foams by non-aerosol techniques are widely known, for example, as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,709,437, 3,937,364 and 4,531,660. Squeeze bottles, while effective for many purposes are necessarily of limited capacity and do not permit the hands of the user to be uninvolved in the use of the device. U.S. Pat. No. 4,957,218 discloses a manually operated foaming device and dispenser which uses manually generated positive pressure to generate foam and negative pressure to refill an auxiliary pump reservoir. Other foam generating devices are described in my prior patents, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,901,925 and 4,991,779.